Fate's Boundary
by Buffelyn
Summary: "He made love to her because he had her back; she made love to him because she knew she couldn’t stay." Bittersweet little AU ficlet, first in series.


Tagline: Post Ahm-Shere, Evy is alive, but she knows that dreams don't last forever. Please don't flame me, just see it as a bittersweet little AU ficlet and get a tissue. 

Warning: If you don't like stories where Evy dies, stop reading now! I know I don't, so I don't blame you. But I got this idea and I just couldn't get it out of my head. Y'all know that there never lived a greater Rick and Evy fan than moi, so you know I'd never kill either of them in my normal universe. Chalk it up to Buffelyn reading one too many tragic Moulin Rouge fics lately. I actually am really proud of this one, it took a lot of work and I like it. So there! :)~ Constructive criticism will be appreciated. Destructive criticism will not. :)

Note: This takes place in a completely different universe. In this timeline the 1933 chapter of CoG did not happen, and the implications within this fic will not apply to my other stories. 

Rating: PG-13 for mild sexuality.

Disclaimer: I lay no claim to Rick and Evelyn O'Connell or Howard Carnahan, but the "indigo fog" concept (seen throughout my stories) belongs to me. 

Fate's Boundary

He made love to her because he had her back; she made love to him because she knew she couldn't stay. They rested together, enveloped in shadows, limbs intertwined, mesmerized by nothing but each other. Nothing else was needed, for they had found another soul in the darkness to cling to, both of them overwhelmed by an understanding that needed no words to form poetry. 

Evelyn held Rick close, unwilling to relinquish the feeling of his skin against hers. She committed to memory the rise and fall of his chest as she listened to his heart beat, matched her breathing with his. She could remember the first time she'd done that, content simply to watch him sleep, savoring the simple fact that she was in his arms. That was enough to content her, and it had scared her that a single person could possess her so completely. 

Lying in his arms, she should have been happy. She was back in London, back in her own home, her own bed, amongst the people that she loved. Everything was normal, everything was perfect...

Evelyn was the only one among them who knew this wasn't true. After the hugs, the kisses, the proclamations of undying love from each of her family members, they had settled into a routine again, assuming that nothing else could possibly go wrong. They had their Evy back, they had defeated an ancient evil, they deserved a break after all that...didn't they? 

Every moment of happiness Evelyn had experienced since that day had been tainted. One instant she'd be happy just to see her son's smiling face, to hold her husband's hand, to laugh at one of her brother's jokes, and in the next....she was besieged by sorrow for the loss that was coming. Not so much for herself, even, but for them. How could she tell them, how could she break their hearts again, so soon? Would they feel betrayed? Would they be angry with her? She couldn't bear that, she couldn't bear to cause them pain...but she couldn't have stood by and watched them die, either. Both options were unacceptable. 

In the days that followed, Evelyn had raged against her terrible secret, willing it to just go away, begging it to reconsider, crying out to deaf ears that this just wasn't fair, it wasn't fair! But she had chosen it, the secret would have said back, you knew what you were doing. You made a deal. Now the future rested on her decision between two impossibles, and there was nothing she could do but wait. 

Rick hadn't slept since Ahm Shere, she knew. She had dozed off only a few times, each time waking terrified that she hadn't gotten to say goodbye. That it was the end. Each time, denying that the end was coming. 

"What are you thinking?" Rick asked. 

The truth was always there, on the tip of her tongue. But she could never force it past her lips. A small bit of the truth would do for now. "That you haven't slept at all since Ahm Shere."

He sighed, taking her hand and kissing the fingers that interlaced with his, unable to let go. "I can't. Every time I close my eyes...I'm so afraid that when I wake up, you'll be gone. I don't want to wake up, Evy. I don't want to go from the dream to the nightmare. I can't do it again."

"Sleep," she said. "I'll be here when you wake."

Rick's forehead creased in a mild frown. "I..."

"What?"

"It's just....nothing. Okay. Good night."

With that he gave her one last light kiss and finally succumbed to the exhaustion that had plagued him since Ahm Shere. Evelyn was glad his eyes had closed already, so he wouldn't see her tears as she was unable to hold them back. He knew; he knew she was lying to him. He always knew. But what could he do, if she told him the truth? It would just make it more painful than it was already going to be.

She couldn't bear to close her own eyes, blinking furiously through the tears so she could study his sleeping face, memorize it for the millionth time. Her mind took her back to the clouds, that indigo fog which had filled her senses and taken her away from him...and the painful stab of grief that had brought it all crashing down in the midst of what should have been happiness. It wasn't happiness, not without her family...

__

She watched, watched the future unfold before her as her family struggled to hold on in the face of despair. They were in pain, she could feel it emanating from them, all through her body to the tips of her fingers. It sliced through the indigo fog that hovered around her, the fog that tried to make her forget. She couldn't forget, not when they were dying. 

A familiar hand on her shoulder, an ancient touch forgotten from the days of her girlhood. She rested her head against his father's chest, trying to draw comfort from his presence. "I failed, dad," she said. "I have failed them."

Howard sighed. "There is nothing you can do now."

_"But Rick needs me," she whispered. "My family needs me, and I can't help them. I left my soul down there, with them...it isn't enough. I have to help them."_

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she let them fall. They dripped off her cheeks and dissolved into the fog, leaving no trace of her grief until fresh tears replaced them. 

"Evelyn..." he said, a tear forming in his own eye. It had been so long since he had cried. "This was meant to happen. You cannot change the past."

"I can change the future."

"So you save them, then what? It will still end. Would you make them lose you all over again? Would you make them suffer a second time?"

Evelyn took a shuddering breath, steeling herself against the inevitable. "I have to help them. I have to save my family. They need me...they need me."

"Love..." she heard him say. "A gift...and a curse..."

A rainbow of color swirled up through the indigo fog and blinded her, plunging her into a stream of white light before it all went black again...

As she watched Rick sleep Evelyn was again startled out of her thoughts, this time by a third presence. For a moment she thought it might have been Alex, up for a glass of water, but then her stomach lurched with sickening certainty as she realized who it was. 

"I'm sorry," Howard said. "You know I wish it didn't have to be this way. But fate's boundary has been challenged, and now fate must reclaim it."

"No," she whispered. "I can't leave them again, I can't..."

"Evelyn, you knew you couldn't stay."

The image of her father faded into the fog that was slowly creeping under the doorway, curling its way up and over the walls, closing in on them. "Rick," she said, "I could only stay for a little while, I'm sorry...I don't want to go...But this isn't the end. We've proved that before, haven't we? Death is only the beginning, right?" She laughed, but it was bittersweet. "At least Imhotep taught us that. We will find each other again, we always have before..."

The fog had reached the bed, tendrils of it wrapping around her body, choking her. She faced the split second decision of whether or not to wake him, to tell him again what she had told him so many times before. But it wouldn't ease the hurt, and it was too late anyway. He would hear her, she knew, whether or not he was awake. 

"I love you," she whispered, even as she could feel herself floating away. 

"I love you, too," he said, though his eyes remained closed. "Always..."

This time, as two souls were ripped apart once more, the only pain she felt was in her heart.


End file.
